Understanding human-robot proxemic norms in construction: How do humans navigate around robots?

As an increasing number of mobile robots are envisioned to work and interact with humans in construction workspaces, it becomes critical that robots ' spatial behaviors align with the expectations of human coworkers to ensure safe and efficient co-navigation. Yet, we have a limited understanding of what robotic spatial behaviors are perceived as socially normative under different work contexts. This paper investigated perceived appropriate proxemic behaviors of robots by examining actual construction practitioners ' spatial behaviors during interactions with robots. We developed a virtual environment of a typical indoor construction job site and explored the role of work conditions and human -robot relations on their proxemic behaviors. The findings reveal that participants tend to maintain a larger separation distance in more crowded work conditions compared to normal ones and when encountering a robot as a passerby compared to encountering a human. We further discuss the implications of our results for the development of robot path planning with appropriate distancing strategies.